User talk:Gallicus
Hello, I have just replied to your question on Steve Jackson (USA). However, I also wanted to say that I think you are doing some great work in cleaning up some of the articles, and especially the development of the gamebook pages. By the way, I have created a brief Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World page for the guide book of the same name.Nedueb 17:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC) Talk:Fighting Fantasy Main Series Hello, I just responded to your comment on the above.Nedueb 12:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC) An Invitation Hello, Gallicus. On behalf of the founding fathers of this wiki, I am inviting you to join the Yahoo discussion group Titan_Rebuilding, as we feel your contributions here more than merit your presence there also. Although it is not used as much as it was prior to the establishment of the Titannica wiki, the group remains key to numerous discussions as to how to write up articles, cross-reference disparate and/or contradictory pieces of information etc. Sincerely, Richard. Rkrommydas 13:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC) Referenceing system Hi Gallicus, I don't agree with your changes to the referencing system. FF35: 133 (preferably in small font) is much better than FF35 (133) as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to redit the ones you've changed on my articles if you don't mind. Pal. Hyperlinks within Articles I was looking at the edits you have made to Allansia, and whilst I agree with many of them, I would like to know why you are removing hyperlinks to other other articles as well?, for example "Sea of Pearls" to "Sea of Pearls". Isn't part of the value of the wiki in the ability to jump from article to article using this easy functionality? Nedueb 14:46, 13 June 2008 (UTC) Hopefully there should be still one link to that page on the page in question. We've probably got very different ideas on editing the wikia (no surprise as we are two different people). I'll explain my thoughts on the matter: Linking I believe that the first reference to something, and in general only that first reference, should be linked, but any further repetition shouldn't. For a couple of reasons, 1) it helps keep the pages tidier in that they don't become a sea of blue text, 2) people creating pages don't have to link everything, 3) and it makes tracking down and weeding out an erroneous link easier. Although I do think that something like a "See Also" section should have everything as a link even if mentioned & linked already in the text above because of the section name! :I tend to agree that articles should not be overlinked, (although I am guilty of having done so on some lists that I have created/amended). However, I disagree that only the first reference to something should be the link. If an article is long, or divided into subsections, then it is more beneficial, in my opinion, to have the link repeated for the convenience of the reader, to avoid having to trawl back through the article. Likewise, subsections within the article may often be read without reading previous sub-sections in which first reference was contained.Nedueb 08:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC) ::I do understand and do make exceptions myself. The reason I brought it up as not only is over-linking messy, but errors in linking tend to occur more often eg."... the Hammer inn is a place ..." and "... as such Dwarf's Hammer inn can be found ..." I'm not making a zealous request to limit to one and one link only - full stop, but to start with that and add others if appropriate (which I do do when I feel it is needed).Gallicus 19:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC) :::On the subject of the The Dwarf's Hammer, I have noted that you have created this page in order to replace the old Dwarf's Hammer Tavern page. In instances where it is believed that a page title is incorrect, such as this example, the best method is to 'Move' the page to the new title, and then delete (or recommend for deletion) the page from which it was moved ( believe that this is also policy used by Wikipedia). The moving functionality preserves the editing history of the original page, which would otherwise be lost. I will amend The Dwarf's Hammer and Dwarf's Hammer Tavern to reflect this approach.Nedueb 20:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC) ::::Cheers. Can't say that I had noticed the "Move" option till you pointed it out! And thanks for having such an pleasant, open approach to maintaining the wiki. It makes the place worthwhile to come back and help add too. Your efforts are appreciated too Nedueb!Gallicus 09:24, 17 June 2008 (UTC) Redirects Should really only exist for things that are known by two different names: eg. Shareella/Snow Witch. Otherwise the correct page should turn up if a user uses the search function on the left. By limiting redirects this saves on the number of pages that need managing. Anyway, those are some (there are probably other) of my thoughts that drive my editing process - beyond the obvious need for correct spelling/grammar and factual accuracy!Gallicus 23:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC) References Good stuff. Keep up the good work - I'm endlessly impressed by your input. Pal. Streamlining, editing, standardising The work you have been doing has been absolutely first rate and is really propelling this wiki towards a first class standard.Nedueb 08:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC) :PS We should have some sort of "Order of xx" to give you. ::Why not call it the "Order of xx"?Gallicus 04:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC) Formatting etc Hello. I believe you are right (in reference to the message left on my talk page). Not just on paragraph style, referencing etc, but also perhaps on general layout. I thin we should perhaps introduce manuals of style for different groups of articles as well. Let's enhance the guidance pages of the wiki to reflect this. On another note, I have just made you a sysop (administrator) which to be frank was long overdue given the supreme effort you have made in cleaning up Titannica etc.Nedueb 06:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC) More on Formatting Hi Alex, I just wanted to query the rationale of some of your recent formatting changes to various articles. Here are some of the things which caught my attention: 1) Placement of commas and full-stops after references rather than before them (as I originally did). As far as I'm concerned, references are usually placed after commas and full-stops (I mean outside of the Wiki), and I'd prefer to keep it this way - it also looks tidier than having 'floating' punctuation marks. 2) I'm not sure why you have capitalised 'north', 'east', 'south(-)est', etc. Surely this should only be done when we are talking about 'The East' as a definite place? 3) Are you sure that using the full name of the books in the references is preferable to using abbreviations such as FF32? It seems a bit like overkill to me, and although it may not be obvious to new users what FF32 means, it is very common in referencing systems to use abbreviations rather than speeling out the full names of publications. And we already use these abbreviations for category names. 4) One or two other little things caught my attention, including your changing of some of my proposed links (e.g. city-state to city-state). Of course, the notion 'city-state' is a rather important one in Fighting Fantasy, so it will be useful to have a page explaining it and giving examples. I suppose what I'm getting at is that it might be nice to discuss some of these issues before going ahead and changing things en mass. That said, I don't want these comments to suggest that I'm not endlessly impressed with your hard work on the Wiki! Thanks, Pal. 1) Had been doing this as in the full text of the edit page it can be hard to tell where a reference belongs. Happy to change them back. 2) This was a get around a spelling issue I recall. Can fix. 3) In the "References" section a series of small rectangular boxes that all look the same is pretty ugly. Again can be easily fixed. 4) Hadn't realised, sorry. Gallicus 19:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC) Referencing Hi Alex, yes, I can see the rationale of separating the book title from the page numbers using a comma. I'm not sure it's the best looking option, and it's hardly a standard practice though. Is there nothing we can do about the funny colon effects (if that doesn't sounf too strange!)? How about another symbol, e.g. -? Oh, and I notice some abbreviated titles are still surrounded by FF32 brackets - is this intentional? Paltogue 10:02, 16 November 2008 (UTC) Have no idea why the colon is affecting things the way it is, but a semi-colon was doing the same thing. A "-" works and I had considered that, but wasn't sure if that was even more clunky looking. I'm leaving the gamebooks as FF32 for now, but the great thing about the template that is it can be easily changed and will affect all the pages using it so it will be no hassle to change it over. Leaving it as it is now means that those pages with them still "in text" won't be screwed up too much at the moment. But I'm working my way backwards alphabetically so I'll catch them all eventually and then the template can be edited to the proper titles.Gallicus 18:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC) I've just tried out - as a separator (see Carsepolis for the example). It needs a space before as well as after, but I think it looks clearer than a comma. What do you think?Paltogue 19:28, 16 November 2008 (UTC) That'll work. I'll work my way back from Z to where I am up to now making that change, and then carry on with other entries in the new style.Gallicus 02:50, 17 November 2008 (UTC) That's looking good!Paltogue 09:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC) City, Town, Village redirects Hello. I have noticed the edits you have made to those pages that have links to town; city; village etc. I have noted that you have edited them so that they point to Category:Cities, Towns and Villages I can understand the logic of this. However, would it not be better and easier to create a REDIRECT. I say this for three reasons: 1) It would save a considerable amount of time. Once created, the redirect for “city” for example would be applied to all such links, rather than having to edit each one. 2) If someone writes an article and wants to link to “city” they would have to write the full link to the page Category:Cities, Towns and Villages. It is unlikely they will know this if they are a new user, and then if they link to city it will not be consistent. 3) If someone creates an article called “Cities”, or “Cities of Titan” etc this would be a better destination for an apparent link from the word “city”. This could be accomplished simply by changing the redirect rather than going to every link to Category:Cities, Towns and Villages Nedueb 23:41, 24 November 2008 (UTC)